My thoughts on life and leadership

Menu

What does the label say?

One of my Christmas presents last year was an electronic labelling machine. This was a great present, and anyone who knows me well will not be surprised that I’ve been labelling anything that doesn’t move, and some things that do! It reminded me of the Dymo machine of years past!

But my fresh passion for labelling has got me thinking… We can be very quick to label other people. And we can be very quick to label ourselves. This often isn’t helpful as we can be too quick to judge and too quick to put people into boxes and place limits around what they, or we, can do.

So, if you’re the type of person that tends to label people – be it others or yourself, my encouragement to you is to hold back from this and ask God to give you His perspective on people. Learn to see people’s potential in God. One of my friends was excellent at this recently, where at a prayer meeting he spoke out what he saw God doing in people’s lives and affirmed their gifts. This was so encouraging and very uplifting. Why not this week, look for opportunities to bless, to build up and to encourage.

If you are a Christian, the only label that God puts on you is one that says “son” or “daughter”. Now, that’s a label really worth having!

[a little tongue in cheek] — Someone affirming gifts isn’t a judgement then? 😉
[More seriously] Labels can be just as binding when they’re meant well. ‘Oh you’re such a [label] gifted musician’, say, — can be just as limiting even though it was meant as an encouragement.

If we can get to a place where we stop speaking out our subjective, value propositional statements as you suggest, perhaps more folk will hear that “the only label that God puts on you is one that says “son” or “daughter”.” and we would be a whole lot less judging and a whole lot more loving.